easter weekend was all kinds of great.

Let’s give a nice big shoutout to Mother Nature this past weekend because as predicated, she was magnificent. Mid-70’s, sunny, perfection. All.weekend.long.

There was a trip to the largest dog park in the universe where we spent almost 3 HOURS on Saturday morning. The seasoned enthusiasts call it “Disneyland for Dogs” and I can see why… Gus friggin’ loved it. And it’s so big that we barely saw anyone while we were hiking around even though there were probably hundreds of people/pups there. Thankfully, no one but us saw when Gus decided to rub his entire body all over a dead skunk. I’m not kidding. He also ate a chunk of horse poo. ……….. That’s all I have to say about that.

Among many other more respectable activities, we were also invited to a friends’ parents house for Easter brunch. I hadn’t given much thought to Easter this year, probably because it’s generally a family holiday and we have no family out here. But it was a nice surprise to be invited to the burbs by our friends – especially since what we thought would be a maybe-awkward, mostly-family gathering was actually a mix of their closest pals and neighbors. It turns out that this group of people, who have all lived in that neighborhood at one time or another, have been getting together for holidays for years. I’m talking 25+ years. Most of them are Oregon-transplants who don’t have much family in the area so they’ve all basically adopted each other and each others’ children as their family. It was so sweet to hear their stories and see photos of the same group of people from Easter, 20 years ago. It definitely gave us hope for our future in Portland. Because it can be so hard to be away from our families. Especially knowing that we’re missing out on holidays and memories. (do you hear tiny violins playing yet because I sure do.) Seriously though, the “family” that we met on Sunday made me excited to continue making friends so great that even if were aren’t able to be in MN for a holiday, we’ll still have our own Portland family to celebrate with.

So, all that being said, who wants to hang out with me for Memorial Day? No pressure.